MER Article Palestinian Communists and the Intifada Maher Al-Sharif, Al-Shuyu‘iyun wa Qadaya al-Nidal al-Watani al-Rahin [The Communists and Issues in the Current National Struggle] (Damascus: Center for Socialist Research and Study in the Arab World, 1988). The role of the Palestinian Communist Party (PCP) is one of the most important and least und Alain Gresh • 9 min read
MER Article Ahmad Sadiq Sa'd We were greatly saddened to learn of the death of Ahmad Sadiq Sa‘d -- a comrade, collaborator and friend of several members of Middle East Report’s editorial family -- in Cairo late last year. Sadiq was one of the intellectuals who stimulated the revival of the Egyptian communist movement in the lat (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article Cambridge Voters Challenge US Policy Voters achieved an historic victory in Cambridge and a section of Somerville, Massachusetts, on November 8, 1988. By a margin of 53 to 47 percent they endorsed Question 5, a non-binding public policy question that called on elected officials to work towards a just settlement of the Palestinian-Israe Matthew S. Gordon • 4 min read
MER Article Children's Territory Given the same materials and the same opportunities, young chiliren all over the world paint in a similar way. They don’ necessarily paint the jame things. (Eskimo children will saint different animals from the chilIren in the Sudan.) What is similar is :he way young children make intuitive narks on John Berger • 2 min read
MER Article Abu Farid's House Driving to Salfit through the villages of Yasuf and Iskaka on a sunny fall day is an exhilarating experience. The asphalt road winds like a snake through hill after hill dotted by olive trees whose clusters of tiny, pastel green leaves shimmer in the light breeze. Rich brown earth, freshly Beshara Doumani • 20 min read
MER Article "We Are Willing to Pay for Settlements But Not for Health Care" One key to understanding how the Israeli economy (malfunctions is that the Histadrut (The General Federation of Workers in Israel; up to 1965 the “Jewish Workers in Israel”) was never simply a trade union. Joel Beinin • 10 min read
MER Article "Transfer" and the Discourse of Racism Saturday night I decided to go to a campaign meeting of the Moledet Party in Kfar Shalem, a rough neighborhood in the south of Tel Aviv. In the past, houses there were periodically served with demolition orders by the Tel Aviv municipality; in 1982 one inhabitant pulled a gun on demolition crews who Ken Brown • 6 min read
MER Article The Elections, the Peace Camp and the Left The November 1988 Israeli election confirmed a pattern set in 1981 and 1984: the vote was nearly equal between the two large bourgeois parties, the Likud and the Alignment (Labor), and both these parties lost strength to their left and right. Asher Davidi • 4 min read
MER Article The Great Divide One of the most intriguing questions after a year of the intifada is the paucity of Israeli opposition to the government’s “iron fist” policy. True, dozens of small groups demonstrate against the occupation, the atrocities, the deportations, the mass arrests. There have been many calls for “better I Emmanuel Farjoun • 13 min read
MER Article Israel Faces the Uprising The Palestinian uprising has stripped away Israel’s externally oriented masks (propaganda) and its internally oriented masks (defense mechanisms), as political rationality has steadily retreated before the state’s frantic response. Israel’s confrontation with the colonial reality of the occupied ter Azmi Bishara • 22 min read
MER Article "Suddenly I Can't Hold My Head Up" Dan Almagor personifies Israeli popular culture of the post-1948 period. He is the master lyricist of the modern Hebrew song, with over 600 compositions and 300 translations to his credit. His songs have been performed on many official and semi-official occasions, and he has composed for the Israel Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article From the Editors (March-April 1989) For well over a year now, the Israeli state has confronted the Palestinian uprising with what Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin calls “the iron fist.” The army’s goal is to restore order, Deputy Chief-of-Staff Ehud Barak said recently, “so that the Israeli government can pursue political initiatives fr The Editors • 2 min read
